Off of Route 441
by some bears
Summary: Rick ran from his old life in search of something different. He really did get in over his head. AU Rick/Daryl


The country side wasn't that far from the quality that movies gave it. Beautiful, vast fields of grass, corn and wheat was laid out on either side of the street. Rick rolled past them quickly. The wind rammed quietly against his car and his wheels span and he tried not to think about anything but the fields.

The sky was deep and rich with blue and met up with the road on the horizon line miles away. The street was smooth and any rocks that could have possibly disturbed his tranquil driving had been grounded down by years of tractors and pickup trucks and hell, maybe even horses walking and taking the path repeatedly.

It sort of felt like he was running; the way he had packed his bags in the middle of the night and waited until he knew Shane had fallen asleep. The way he drove and drove like he had some destination in mind but there was nothing.

Rick didn't have parents to move in with, not at the ripe, old age of 36. He didn't have siblings. He had grown up alone and an only child and he didn't have extended family. No uncles or aunts or little annoying cousins that stole his toys at family reunions. There was nobody.

He could look at it as not being tied down, and while he was on the road he really tried to.

It was good not to be connected to anyone.

No matter how many times he had to remind himself of that, it was true.

* * *

He figured he had finally hit the center of Georgia a few miles ago. In Georgia, the weather was sticky and dry in all of the wrong places, and moody. Sometimes it would storm for no reason. Sometimes it would storm for hours upon hours and cause the lakes and rivers to swell and the dirt roads to churn into hazardous swamps.

It wasn't a very pleasant place.

Rick was used to the city. He had lived in them his entire life. From Seattle, to New York to Las Vegas to Atlanta. Cities were familiar. It wasn't hard to find a gas station or a grocery store or a hotel, but the county side was foreign. It took him a handful of maps, a compass and good luck to even find a town or a building out in the middle of nowhere.

He had met a lot of kind people in diners along the way, though. The rumor about county folk being kind wasn't tested or tried. Instead, it seemed appropriate.

Rick had met a family of seven a while back that told him stories of their travels around the states and he had met a couple that had shown him all of the best places to shop in their tiny town. There had been a single father and his ten year old boy that had bought him dinner and a hotel and smiled at him so kindly that Rick had been left stunned. He had been introduced to a traveling circus group that balanced on the backs of elephants and stuck their heads in lions' mouths for the entertainment of others.

Rick had found out that the world was filled with interesting people.

In every town or village that he stopped at, he would fill up his tank, sit in a diner and let people come up to him and tell him their stories, but he never told them his. His tale was sad and difficult and painful and would ruin the moods of everyone around him, so he kept it all to himself.

It had been almost eight hours since his last stop so he kept his eyes open and watched for signs.

He found out quickly from his map that right off of route 441, if he followed 112, he would come to a little farming town called Toomsboro.

It was just past noon when he arrived in town. It was as small as he imagined.

There was just over thirty buildings in all and a population about the same size as Rick's old high school.

His Dodge Charger stood out in the parking lot of rusty old Impalas and GMCs.

The diner was nice, busty and small. It was quiet, too.

Rick's legs were a little sore from being bunched up in his car and holding still for such a long time. He tried to stretch out a little before he took a seat at a table.

There weren't too many people inside that day, it seemed. Only a lone bearded man in the corner and a small family of awkwardly quite tourists. There were waitresses at least, and they always knew how to hold up a conversation.

"You should get outa town." the waitress who approached him was rather old but still retained some beauty from her prime years. Her warning was kind and worried and held no palpable threat.

"Why?" Rick asked. His voice was a little rusty. He hadn't used it much over the last month.

"Yer new ta town, ain't ya?" she held up the pot of coffee in her hands and Rick gave her a short nod and she poured him a cup.

"Yeah, I'm new."

"Well, you don't speak like yer from around here." she had a thick southern accent that complimented her and the state nicely. Rick didn't carry the same tongue. He was from Pennsylvania.

"Yeah." Rick agreed, without an accent.

The waitress set his cup in front of him and sighed, "This town is dangerous. Especially fer people like ya."

"People like me?" Rick asked. He knew of the southern state's indiscretion towards anything unusual, but Rick didn't stand out or look like a threat or wear his sexuality on his sleeve.

"People around here don't take well to people with money." The woman told him, "And you look like yer carryin' quite a bit."

"I'm nearly broke." It was true. Other than his car and the few hundred dollars in his bank account, Rick was running on nothing but hope and the common decency of other people. He wished he had enough for hotels and real food, but as the days went by his funds were running on empty. He was running out of money.

"Well, yer car and yer clothes say otherwise." His waitress chirped and span off in the other direction, "Tell me if ya need anythin' else."

Rick looked down at his clothes. He had been able to scare up a few quarters from the bottom of his car the other day and wash them, but they were one of the only outfits he had. He only had what he had grabbed from home.

The coffee was nice, but it was lukewarm.

* * *

He had been driving for only two or three minutes when his car started acting up. He never would have guessed somebody had tampered with it while he was eating lunch until he had poked his head under the hood to check out the engine.

Spray paint decorated his car's inner body work with crude messages and a gang signature.

Rick poked around for a bit, but he didn't know much about cars or trucks or engines. He sighed and stepped back and waited for help.

It didn't take long before an old, rusty pickup truck circled down his road with a bed full of rowdy men with snide, ugly faces and bloody, banged up tools they probably weren't planning to use to fix his car.

The driver and the other occupants hopped out of their truck in near symmetry and they surrounded him in a semi-circle and the driver, the leader, talked to him.

"We don't take kindly to stranger round' here." He had said with a sneer.

"I heard." Rick closed the hood of his car and backed up. His eyes immediately darted around for an escape.

The leader narrowed his eyes and stepped forward in time, "I think me an' ma boys here should teach ya a lesson." His accent was the heaviest he had heard. It was almost hard to understand him.

"I'm just passing through. I can be gone in half an hour as long as my car will start."

"What's wrong with yer car?" the kid smiled at him with a grin that said he knew. Rick didn't feel inclined to answer him.

"I'll just be on my way, if you'll let me."

"I think ya need some of our protection, if ya wanna leave tha town unscathed." the leader told him with an evil mirth, "There's a lota bad people around that'll wanna hurt ya."

"And how do I get your protection?" Rick already knew, but he was still trying to evaluate the best course of action and stalling was the only way.

The leader moved closer again and flashed him a smile that promised bodily harm and swung his baseball bat onto his shoulder like a lazy ball player. Rick didn't imagine the kid used his toy for baseball, though. "You already know tha answer. Money."

"I don't have any."

He really didn't expect the bat to swing for him already, so he couldn't dodge. Rick crashed to the ground from the force, but didn't feel the pain. It was mostly the sound of the cracking that echoed in his head that left him stunned.

The group of boys rumbled with laughter and jeers and Rick really didn't feel safe.

"Why would somebody with a car like this," the leader ran his fingers over Rick's car, "and them clothes all nice like tha', have no money?"

"I really don't." Rick blinked until the world stopped spinning and juggled his weight side to side as he got back to his feet.

The bat hit him in the gut and before he could fall to the ground or shield himself there were hands and shoes reaching for him and yanking him everywhere and the chaos reigned down on him until he couldn't breathe.

They let up before the world went black.

"Let's try this again." the leader snarled, his voice edging towards dangerous. "Yer gonna need some protection from all them bad guys who want to see you dead." The cruel man punctuated his sentence with a kick to Rick's head.

Rick's neck snapped back. The leader retreated a few feet and let Rick gather himself.

Rick pulled himself to his feet again, though he didn't know why. Maybe it was his odd, misplaced will to live or his cocky attitude or maybe he really wanted to die and facing that head on seemed hilarious.

He felt his bones crack and moan softy as he readjusted and stood hunched a bit.

"You ready to pay up?" The leader laughed and his posse laughed too. They sounded a lot like a swarm of crows.

It wasn't until Rick's head had been kicked back a few seconds ago, but it was then he had truly noticed the corn fields behind him. Damn, they seemed like heaven right then and even though Rick wasn't really a fan of corn, he was willing to try it again after this mess if he made it because he really was that thankful.

He didn't think of himself as a coward when he turned tail and ran. The group of boys probably did, but Rick didn't really care.

He ran in a zigzag motion once he breached the wall of corn. He had learned that on Discovery channel. Deer could lose a predator that way.

It had worked for almost half a mile, but then Rick started to get tired and the men behind him started to get fussy and angry and mean. They shouted words after him, things about his mother and his cowardliness and he didn't pay that any mind because if they caught him, they would do so much worse.

The corn sort of ended after that, though.

It came as a great shocker to Rick and he scrambled all over the place and tripped to his knees. He heard twigs snapping behind him so he just kept going. He didn't really have time to get to his feet, so he compromised with a desperate crawl and got almost six feet before the boys were upon him.

They stood over him, out of breath and filled with rage.

The leader reached back, to the waist of his pants as if going for a handgun and Rick closed his eyes.

He was sort of glad it was all over. At least he wouldn't die by Shane's hand, even though it wasn't much of a step up to be murdered by a group of hicks with bad taste in body bags. His body would probably never be found. He was strangely comfortable with that.

A gun cocked but it didn't sound much like a typical hand gun.

"Ya'll best start explainin' what tha fuck yer doin' on ma property." The voice was far from angelic. It was rough and textured with displeasure and hate and distrust. Rick knew he had been saved though, because all of the boys over him stilled and went rigid.

Rick opened his eyes.

"F-fuck..." the leader croaked under his breath. That had been real fear in his voice, almost as if he had been dragged to Hell and found himself facing his punishments.

The new arrival stood in front of the sun and his body was silhouetted. It was like something out of an old western movie.

He held a shot gun like he knew what he was doing.

The boys seemed to flinch as the gun swung around slowly and fingered them out individually. Almost as if they believed he would really pull the trigger. Rick didn't doubt that for a second.

"Answer me!" The stranger demanded. His voice was sharp and cold and Rick couldn't help but picture Clint Eastwood, the gallant hero come to save the day. Rick had always loved those movies.

"We were- we were jus' gettin' this here lad off yer land!" The leader stuttered, "We saw him running into yer fields and- and we knew he was up ta no good so we chased him down! We didn't want him causin' you and yer fields no good."

"Do you think me an' Merle can't handle our land all ba' ourselves?" The stranger barked, "Ya'll think we're not good enough ta protect our property?"

"That's not what we're sayin', we jus' wanted to help-"

The shotgun went off with a cacophonous bang and every head ducked down as if the bullet was going for their heads. The barrel, however, was aimed at the sky,

"I won't ask again." the stranger hissed. "Get tha fuck off ma land!"

And then, the boys were gone as if the devil himself was at their heels.

* * *

**A/N-** Hey, this is Dropkicking Bullet Shells and writerchick0214. We're co-writing this story.

We really hope you liked it and you leave a comment on your way out! It would mean a lot!

See you all next time!


End file.
